Dear Friends, I'm pleased to share the news that my paper was accepted for presentation at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the SBL in Boston. I'll be presenting in the Performance Criticism section (by the way, I am co-leading the "Teaching the Bible Through Performance" pre-conference section on Friday - you should sign up!). The title and abstract are below. I'm looking forward to this as it'll be my 66th conference presentation and, I believe, the 7th year in a row presenting at the annual meeting. I also look forward to seeing you there.
Mark's account, if nothing else, fits the description of "loud"! Indeed, from a statistical perspective, 1 out of every 3 verses contains some sort of scream or acoustic intrusion. Most certainly, one function of these dramatic devices was that they served to grab the attention of ancient Markan audiences. These increases in volume, however, are often staggered with jarring but critical moments of silence embedded in and throughout the text. Identifiable by both implicit and explicit oral-textual cues, silence in this work becomes golden and pays rich dividends to observers who tune into it. In this paper, I aim to help readers do just that as I explore the pragmatic effects of quietness in Mark. I show how they aid in structuring the performative ebb and flow of this intense antique drama.
